GOMA, Congo - The rebel general besieging this provincial capital said Thursday he wants direct talks with the Congo government about ending the fighting and his objections to a $9 billion deal that gives China access to vast mineral riches in exchange for a railway and highway.
Laurent Nkunda told The Associated Press in a telephone interview he also wants the urgent disarmament of a Rwandan Hutu militia that he accuses of preying on his minority Tutsi people.
Nkunda launched a low-level rebellion three years ago claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi, and despite agreeing in January to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, resumed fighting in August. He alleges the Congolese government has not protected the Tutsi from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter half a million Rwandan Tutsis in 1994. Nkunda says government troops are collaborating with the Rwandan Hutus, a claim Congo denies.
"It's not acceptable for government soldiers to be fighting alongside genociders," Nkunda said. "We want peace for people in the region."
Congo has charged Nkunda himself with involvement in war crimes, and Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture, and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda's command in 2002 and 2004.
Nkunda's rebellion has threatened to reignite the back-to-back wars that roiled Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in eight African nations including Rwanda, which is believed to support Nkunda. President Joseph Kabila, elected in 2006 in the first elections in 40 years, has struggled since to contain the bloody insurgency in the east.
The United Nations has only 6,000 of its 17,000-strong Congo peacekeeping mission in the east, because of unrest in other provinces. It says the force is badly overstretched and urgently needs reinforcement.
Nkunda commands about 10,000 rebels.
He has said he wants to take Goma, which is a border post with Rwanda. But so far he has heeded U.N. demands that he stay out of the city, and called for a cease-fire when he reached its outskirts on Wednesday.
Army Col. Jonas Padiri said the situation was calm Thursday morning and that his men were in control of Goma. Soldiers patrolled the city in trucks; one soldier, sitting by the side of the road, wore a Darth Vader mask. Some soldiers appeared drunk at 8 a.m. but there was none of the gunfire that had crackled throughout the night.
U.N. peacekeepers in armored cars also patrolled and were cheered by residents. Earlier this week, crowds had lobbed rocks onto all four U.N. compounds in Goma, to vent their outrage at the peacekeepers' failure to halt the rebel advance.
Almost all shops were shuttered and schools stayed closed, but people thronged the streets, discussing the crisis, exchanging news and wondering what the night would bring. Some vendors sold vegetables by the roadside.
Overnight, soldiers pillaged and raped, and killed at least nine people in their homes, according to U.N. Radio Okapi.
On Thursday, as the sun set over Lake Kivu, gunfire crackled once again.
Nkunda said Thursday he had called the cease-fire in hopes of stopping the chaos in Goma. He said he would keep his fighters at a distance, that they had retreated seven miles (12 kilometers) from Goma, and he wants to maintain the cease-fire to allow humanitarian help to get through and the refugees to go home.
In contrast to the widespread looting by the Congolese army, aid workers say that Nkunda's forces have been more disciplined, taking only medicine that they need from clinics, for example.
The recent fighting, the worst in years, has forced more than 200,000 people from their homes in two months, the United Nations says. Nkunda has taken large swaths of territory from the army and set up his own administrations and tax system.
He fought alongside Rwandan Tutsi rebels who halted the 1994 genocide and took over Rwanda, then joined the Congolese rebellion that toppled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. But he defected from Congo's army in 2005.
In the interview, Nkunda never mentioned the word Tutsi, saying his mission is to protect the Congolese people. Hutus are the biggest tribe in eastern Congo, making up about 40 percent of the population. Tutsis are about 3 percent.
Nkunda said he has offered to set up an "urgent humanitarian corridor" for refugees and aid. It was unclear how many people might want to return, though having thousands more people behind rebel lines would strengthen Nkunda's hand in any possible peace talks.
He has adopted new tactics that makes it difficult for the peacekeepers to confront him -- his well-trained and well-armed rebels are fighting on several fronts in small bands who hit and run and then use the population as human shields.
Nkunda is believed to fund his fighters by illegally mining minerals and smuggling them to Rwanda. The soldiers and other militia also mine illegally, meaning they have no financial interest in stopping the fighting.
But Nkunda says his mission is not mercenary: that he turned down a government offer last year of $2.5 million for him to stop fighting and go into exile in South Africa.
He says he wants direct talks with the government to negotiate numerous issues but complained in particular about the $9 billion agreement in which China gets access to Congo's vast mineral riches in return for building a highway and railroad that would open up the remote mining interior to southern neighbors and a port on the Atlantic.
Demands for minerals have fueled Congo's conflicts for years. Experts confirmed that the situation was largely unchanged from 2001, when a U.N. investigation on the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Congo found that the conflict had become mainly about "access, control and trade" of five key mineral resources: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold.
Exploitation of Congo's natural resources by foreign armies was "systematic and systemic," and the Ugandan and Rwandan leaders in particular had turned their soldiers into armies of business, it said. The U.N. panel estimated that Rwanda's army made at least $250 million in 18 months by selling coltan, which is used in cell phones and laptops.
The conflict "has created a 'win-win' situation for all belligerents," the report concluded. "The only loser in this huge business venture is the Congolese people."
In some ways, mineral exploitation has become "the means and the ends of the conflict," said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "There's virtually no government control over the eastern Congo, and much of the conflict there is a scramble at the local level and at the regional level for access to land and the minerals underneath them."
Johanna Jansson, senior analyst at the Center for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, who has knowledge of the agreement, said the value of the deal had been confirmed at $9 billion.
The joint venture is between Congo's state-owned mining company Gecamines and a consortium of Chinese companies, which is believed to include China Railway Group, Sinohydro and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company.
Under the deal, the joint venture will have the rights to extract 10.6 million tons of copper and more than 600,000 tons of cobalt.
In return, the joint venture will provide Congo with $6 billion worth of construction of roads, two hydroelectric dams, hospitals and schools, and rail tracks linking the south-eastern Katanga province in the copperbelt with Matadi, Congo's Atlantic port. The remaining $3 billion will be invested in mining infrastructure, primarily in new mining areas.
